This news is from a couple of weeks ago (November 27, 2017), but it eluded me at the time, as I was busy with other posts. This story will be of interest especially to fans of figure skating.

Tarasova cuts a flamboyant figure in the Kiss and Cry

If you are such, then the names of the two Tatianas — Tarasova and Navka — will be familiar to you. As you already know, Tanya #1 Tarasova is the legendary coach of several generations of figure champion champions; and Tanya #2 Navka is the 2006 Olympic Champion (for Russia) of ice-dance, along with her dance partner Roman Kostomarov. Navka was, and is, a superb figure skater and athlete, but her relationship (and marriage in 2015) to Dmitry Peskov (who is President Putin’s press secretary) earned her the hostility and contempt of Western media, who then set out to criticize everything she did and said. They even had the gall to criticize a beautiful ice dance she performed to commemmorate the Jewish Holocaust, as I described in this past blogpost. Also here, Part II. By the way, Peskov and Navka have a daughter together, and their marriage is apparently solid. But this story isn’t about Navka’s marriage, nor even the political side of things. It’s about the personal relationship between Navka and the regal Tarasova.

Without further ado, here is a straight translation of the piece from the Russian online magazine Woman.Ru:

TRANSLATION

Headline: Navka publicly apologized to to Tarasova

Seventy-year-old Tatiana Tarasova has become the heroine of the popular (TV) show “This Evening”. On the program also appeared one of the students of the legendary coach: 42-year-old Tatiana Navka. The figure skater admitted, that to this very day she cannot forgive herself for not inviting her teacher to her wedding with 50-year-old Dmitry Peskov.

During her long career as a coach, the proclaimed trainer Tatiana Tarasova frequently became the witness of relationships between figure skaters. These athletes would often invite their coach to their weddings. However, in the “This Evening” talk show, the discussion was about a special event to which Tarasova was not invited. It turns out that Tatiana Navka did not invite her coach to her 2015 wedding with Dmitry Peskov.

“I could hardly forgive Tanka,” Tarasova admitted. While also admitting that she herself forgot to invite certain people to her own recent birthday!

The Olympic champion, who had trained for a certain time with Tarasova, finally had a chance to tell her side of the story and explain what happened — and it was not from anger that she (inadvertently) offended the coach. She told the following story as she entered the studio: “I was relying on my assistants. I had no time or energy to do any of this myself. We were skating Carmen, and I had a ton of other things to worry about. It was only at the wedding itself that I realized what I horrible lapse I had committed. Tatiana Anatolievna [Tarasova] was seriously offended. With tears in my eyes I begged her forgiveness. I could even imagine in my mind the toast she would have delivered had she been there! And I deprived myself of that.” The figure skater went on to promise, that she will most certainly invite the coach to her daughter’s wedding.